RemoveMacAI

Debloat macOS. Turn off Apple Intelligence and delete its models, stop the analytics and ads, quiet the pop-ups, switch off other apps' background updaters and get disk space back. You see every change before it happens, and every change can be undone.

Built on pared by 4evy, who did the hard work first: mapping Apple's asset service, the model sets and the settings keys the Apple Intelligence part relies on.

The Verge, Ars Technica, The Register, MacRumors, AppleInsider and Help Net Security have written about RemoveMacAI, and Daring Fireball linked to it.

Install

The app

Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities), paste this line and press Return:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/main/install.sh | bash -s app

It downloads the latest release, checks its SHA-256 checksum, puts RemoveMacAI in Applications and opens it.

To download it yourself instead, get RemoveMacAI.zip from the latest release, unzip it and drag RemoveMacAI to Applications. The app is not notarized, so the first time you open it macOS says it can't verify it. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.

The command line

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/main/install.sh | bash

This runs the command-line version from a temporary folder and installs nothing. With Homebrew:

brew install omlahore/tap/removemacai

The app and the command line are the same program and share the same undo history. If you installed the app from the zip, choose RemoveMacAI > Install Command Line Tool… to get the removemacai command too.

What it does

Section	What you can turn off or change
Apple Intelligence	Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, ChatGPT, summaries in Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes and notifications, inline predictions, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up, Xcode predictive completion. The models are deleted and blocked from downloading again. Keep any feature you use.
Privacy	Mac Analytics, personalized ads, Improve Siri and Dictation, Improve Search, Spotlight internet results, Look Up suggestions, Safari search suggestions, Game Center
Annoyances	Clicking the wallpaper hiding every window, desktop widgets, the media keys, all Music launches (including AirPods; opt-in), iPhone Mirroring
Apple apps	Apple Music in the Music app, the Book Store, unused Apple apps in the Dock
Finder	File extensions, hidden files, the path and status bars, folders first, searching the current folder, the extension warning, .DS_Store files on network drives, emptying the Trash after 30 days, saving to your Mac instead of iCloud, the Library folder
Dock and windows	Recent apps, the auto-hide delay, bouncing icons, minimizing into the app icon, window animations, gaps between tiled windows, screenshot shadows
Typing	Autocorrect, smart quotes and dashes, the double-space period, automatic capitals, the accent menu on held keys
Background items	Updaters and helpers other apps install, such as Google's updater, shown with what they run and switched off one by one
Storage	Old macOS installers, aerial wallpaper videos, iPhone and iPad update files, Xcode build data and device support, unavailable simulators, app caches, Time Machine local snapshots, and Apple's optional apps (GarageBand and its sound library, iMovie, Keynote, Numbers, Pages)

Two presets get you started. Recommended turns Apple Intelligence, analytics and ads off and removes the pop-ups, and leaves alone anything you rely on. Maximum privacy adds Game Center and Safari's search suggestions. Both add to what is already applied, and nothing changes until you review it.

Command line

Command	Description
removemacai	Show the state of Apple Intelligence, then turn it off
removemacai status	Show each Apple Intelligence feature and the size of its models
removemacai off --keep <features>	Turn Apple Intelligence off but leave the listed features on
removemacai on	Turn Apple Intelligence back on and keep the other changes
removemacai tweaks	List every tweak and whether it is applied (--json for scripts)
removemacai apply <tweaks>	Apply tweaks by name
removemacai apply --preset recommended	Apply a preset, Apple Intelligence off included
removemacai undo <tweaks>	Undo tweaks by name
removemacai background	List other apps' background items; off or on with their labels
removemacai clean	Show the space you can get back; name items to move them to the Trash
removemacai export <file>	Write the configuration profile for an MDM
removemacai export <file> --for iphone|ipad	Write an iPhone or iPad profile
removemacai revert	Undo everything RemoveMacAI changed
removemacai app	Open the app

apply, undo, background and clean show the change first and ask. --dry-run shows it and stops, and --yes skips the question.

Tab completion for zsh, bash and fish is in completions. Each script says where it goes.

For Mac admins

removemacai export writes the same configuration profile the app installs, so you can deploy it with Jamf, Kandji, Intune or any other MDM:

removemacai export RemoveMacAI.mobileconfig --preset recommended
removemacai export AI-off.mobileconfig --keep writing-tools
removemacai export Privacy.mobileconfig --no-ai analytics personalized-ads spotlight-web

It holds the Apple Intelligence restrictions, the download block for removed models and the locked tweaks. Per-user tweaks such as Finder and Dock settings aren't in the profile; removemacai apply sets those on each Mac. removemacai tweaks --json reports the state of every tweak for compliance scripts.

iPhone and iPad

export --for iphone or export --for ipad writes a profile for that device:

removemacai export Phone.mobileconfig --for iphone
removemacai export Pad.mobileconfig --for ipad

An unsupervised phone only honors the Siri and ChatGPT switches.

How it works

• Locked settings (Apple Intelligence and the tweaks marked with a lock) go in one configuration profile that you approve in System Settings, because macOS requires that. Removing the profile undoes all of them.
• Other settings are written the way defaults write writes them. RemoveMacAI first records each setting's previous value in ~/Library/Application Support/RemoveMacAI/journal.json, and undo puts back exactly that value.
• Models are removed through Apple's asset service, and the profile points their downloads at a closed local port so macOS doesn't fetch them again.
• Storage cleanup moves files to the Trash, so they aren't gone until you empty it. Unavailable simulators and Time Machine local snapshots are deleted right away by simctl and tmutil.

System Integrity Protection stays on, nothing under /System is modified, and RemoveMacAI collects no data. It makes no network requests, except to GitHub when you choose Check for Updates… in the app.

What it doesn't do

• Delete Apple's built-in apps. They live on the sealed system volume. Removing them needs System Integrity Protection off, and a failed attempt can leave the Mac unable to start. RemoveMacAI quiets them instead and removes the optional apps that Apple lets you delete.
• Mass-disable Apple's background services. With System Integrity Protection on, macOS refuses to unload most of them, and many start again whenever an app asks for them. RemoveMacAI switches off the one that unloads cleanly (the media keys) and other apps' background items.

FAQ

Does dictation still work? Yes. Dictation is a separate setting, and its speech models are not removed.

Where do I use Photos Clean Up after keeping it enabled? Open a photo in Photos, choose Edit, then Tools > Clean Up. Photos Clean Up is not a separate switch in System Settings.

Do macOS updates undo the changes? The profile persists across updates. If an update resets one of the other settings, RemoveMacAI shows it as not applied and you can apply it again.

Storage settings still lists Apple Intelligence after the models were deleted. Apple's asset service releases the models right away, but macOS deletes the files on its own schedule. Until then, System Settings > General > Storage keeps counting them under Apple Intelligence.

Why is a process named Siri still running? In macOS 27 the Spotlight window runs as a process named Siri. Some system services also stay loaded; they are protected by System Integrity Protection.

What stops working when Apple Intelligence is off? The features listed above, apps that use Apple's on-device models (the Foundation Models framework and the Use Model action in Shortcuts), Visual Intelligence and natural-language editing in Calendar.

Requirements

Apple silicon.

macOS	Status
27	Supported, tested on 27.0. On 27.0.1, use 0.2.3 or later.
26	Runs since 1.1.0. Most of the testing has been on 27.
15.1 and later (Sequoia)	In testing, use 1.2.0-beta.1. Spatial Photos isn't on 15, so it's left out there.
15.0 and earlier	Not supported, Apple Intelligence starts in 15.1

Uninstall

Run removemacai revert or click Undo Everything in the app, then delete the app or run brew uninstall removemacai.

Acknowledgements

The Apple Intelligence part of RemoveMacAI is built on pared, a complete working tool by 4evy that first mapped the asset service, the model sets and several of the settings keys. Its license is in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

Contributors

Thanks to everyone who has sent fixes, features, bug reports and testing.

Made with contrib.rocks.

Star history

Support

If RemoveMacAI is useful to you, you can sponsor it on GitHub.

Author

I'm Om Lahore and I'm available for work, both full-time roles and freelance projects like macOS apps, Claude Code setup for teams, and AWS and CI/CD. You can reach me at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.

License

MIT